WordPress is used by all kind of websites. There are artists, freelancers, hobbyists, non-government organizations, charities, churches, causes and so many other individuals and organizations running their websites on WordPress. A lot of these individuals and organizations accept donations from website visitors who share their cause or appreciate their work. The most common way to collect donations is by adding paypal “donate” button on your website.

How to add a Paypal Donate Button to WordPress Manually

Paypal’s Create a donate button page lets you choose button size, credit card logos to display, point to your own image as a button. You can also choose currency and decide whether you want to receive a fixed amount per donation or you want to let the donor decide which amount they want to donate. Once you have created the button you get the code on the next screen. Copy this code and go to your WordPress admin area > Appearance > Widgets and paste the code in a Widget where you want the button to appear.

How to receive More Donations on your Website?

Most website owners who are accepting donations on their websites will tell you that a simple button pasted in your sidebar is not going to bring donations automatically. You will have to ask for donations, manage them seriously, thank to donors, and run it in an organized smooth manner. This is where WordPress Donation Plugins come to extend the functionality of the donate button.

Easy WordPress Donations Plugin

Easy WordPress Donations is a premium plugin that allows you to accept paypal donations on your website. Easy WordPress Donations also helps you manage donations by running a targeted campaign, send thank you emails to donors. It is very easy to use and install. I particularly liked Donation List that displays the donation activity; enabling it you can show the activity to public and encourage others to donate as well.

Easy to install and use.

Create user accounts for donors in your WordPress website with the user role of Subscriber. Donors can then upload their pictures if they want to.

Shortcodes allow you to integrate Donation Form and Donation List in any page, post or widget.

Set donations target and display it in Donations List activity.

Set fixed donation amounts to accept.

Choose a thank you page where user is taken after they have submitted a donation.

Send customized Thank you email to donors.

Send reminders to donors if a donation is not processed after two days.

Awesome Donation System for WordPress

Encouraging donors to donate on your website is a gesture from your side to the donor that you appreciate their contribution. Awesome Donation System for WordPress is another premium plugin that helps you manage your donations and encourage the donors.

It has a star badge system where donors who have donated more than a certain amount get to display a star badge next to their donation in the Donation List. This plugin was ported to WordPress from an awesome PHP script by the same name.

Accept donations from website visitors.

Allows donors to add a link back to their webpage.

Show a star badge next to the name of donors who have contributed a specified amount.

Colorful and customizable activity list.

Privacy options for donors to remain anonymous or hide the amount they have donated.

Donate Plus

Donate Plus is a free WordPress plugin to manage your donations. It has all the features that we have seen in other donation plugins and it is very easy to configure and integrate anywhere on your website. Donate Plus also empowers website donors to select the information they would like to be displayed on your donor wall. Another feature that makes Donate Plus powerful is the ability to handle recurring donations on daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis.

Accept paypal donations from website visitors.

Simple shortcodes to display Donation Form and Donation Wall on any WordPress post or page.

Donors can choose which information to display on your website’s Donor wall.

Send a thank you note to the donors after they have submitted a donation.

Olimometer Fundraising Thermometer Plugin

Olimometer creates a fundraising thermometer graphic for your donation campaigns. This plugin requires GD Libraries extension enabled for PHP on your webserver. The plugin can be integrated with paypal to keep itself upto date with the progress.

Displays a thermometer shaped graphic to display the progress of a fundraising campaign.

You can manually update the progress or integrate it with paypal to autoupdate itself. \

The plugin uses GD Libraries to generate graphics.

You can customize the background, colors, text size and color, and image height.

Comes with 4 Skins, you can also create your own skins by editing skins.xml file.

Accept Donations using other Payment Gateways

2Checkout Donate WordPress Plugin

This simple plugin allows you to add 2Checout Donate button to your websites posts, pages and widgets using shortcode. The plugin is simple and easy to configure from the options screen as well as by adding the parameters directly into the shortcode.

Accept donations from visitors using the 2Checkout payment gateway.

Create buttons or links with fixed value.

Set a default donation amount.

Set currency and language options.

There is also a demo mode available for you to play with.

2Checout Donate WordPress Plugin »

WP Stripe

Stripe is a relatively new payment system and this plugin helps website owners integrate stripe payment system on their websites. Stripe claims to be cheaper than paypal and more accessible. The major limitation of Stripe is that only the US residents can receive payments through Stripe. The plugin basically provides the common features of other popular paypal plugins.

Add payment forms to your website using shortcodes.

Show recent donors in a widget with their gravatars.

To use the plugin you will need to create API keys for your account.

The form interface is simple.

It uses Gravatars to display donor pictures, and donors can opt-in or out of it while making a donation.

End Note

While integrating your donation plugins on your website, make sure that you place these buttons at a location where they do not annoy website visitors. Avoid putting buttons in the middle of content, overlapping it or even overshadowing it. A good user experience on your website will create more favorable opinion towards your cause and hence it is more likely to result into a donation.

I just built a donation form for one of my clients, but I used Gravity Forms and it’s PayPal add-on. Very powerful and customisable. I found in the past that a lot of the donation plugins were a bit unreliable, but that may have changed now.